


Love People (Cook Them Tasty Food)

by ChibiRHM



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiRHM/pseuds/ChibiRHM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A love story in cooking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love People (Cook Them Tasty Food)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in between epics (one is off to beta, one is being... difficult), so I needed a theraputic little something to dash off. This is it. It is possibly less about Sid and Geno and more about food, for which I am not sorry. Thanks to novembersmith for the beta.
> 
> The title is the motto of [Penzeys](http://www.penzeys.com/), the greatest spice store on the planet. Seriously, if you cook or know someone who does, order a starter kit from there. They will change your life. You're welcome.

Before Sid and Geno started dating - before Geno even knew that dating Sid was something he wanted to or could do - he always stole his teammates’ pickles, the way Tanger always steals the pizza crusts no one else eats.

“Here,” Nealer says when he hands his over to Geno, "I don’t know how you aren’t too thirsty. I eat one of these things and I’m chugging water like I’m dying.”

“Not Russian,” Geno says, because its true. Yes, Americans make pickles too salty, but if Nealer were Russian, if he’d grown up with that sour tang and salty aftertaste as omnipresent instead of unusual. American food is so bland sometimes, he thinks. He smiles at Sid when he filches his pickle too, and Sid gives him a thoughtful little frown that quickly clears when Geno squeezes his knee under the table.

\- - -

It starts with borscht - with _the_ borscht, Geno’s mother’s borscht that everyone wants to make. Sid, it seems, wants to make it too, but he has access to Geno’s mother, who drops in two weeks into him dating Sid, his father in tow.

“What, I can’t visit my son now?” she asks, when Geno accuses her of coming to scope Sid out. It’s absolutely what she came to do, but she also came to cook, “because two boys who play hockey, who’s going to take care of the pair of you if I don’t?”

She and Sid don’t understand each other at all, but Geno’s mother does understand when Sid goes “borscht?” with wide, innocent eyes, and she and Sid make enough to fill Geno’s freezer, enough so Geno never wants to see another beet again, until Sid’s memorized the recipe and Geno’s mother has patted Sid’s cheek and said, “Zhenya, tell this boy he’s good as Russian, now,” which means she thinks he’s perfect.

Geno ends up giving everyone on the team a container of the reject batches of borscht, just to cut down on his own stock. He likes it better fresh, anyways, and he likes how when he comes back from a good, long sulk after a bad loss, he usually finds Sid in his kitchen, determinedly cleaning and chopping beets until his fingers are blood-red. He likes to close his eyes and smell the familiar smells of home.

\- - -

Unlike most hockey players, Geno _can_ cook - his mother never would have let him get away with not knowing how - he just doesn’t like to very much. He finds it tedious, boring and fiddly and never as good as when someone else cooks for him. And what’s nice about Sid, or one of the many nice things about Sid, is that he does like to cook. He says it’s calming, and he likes the routine of it, likes knowing that you always saute the onions first and cook pasta for exactly so long. He always cooks for Geno when he’s over, and he’s not Geno’s mother, the food isn’t terribly complicated, and it’s certainly not Russian, but it’s good, and it’s hearty, and Sid made it, so Geno loves it.

The thing Geno misses about Russian food isn’t the ingredients. What’s Russian about cooking isn’t so much the ingredients as how they’re handled and put together, but the individual components stay the same. If he ever gets too homesick he’ll have a little caviar on crackers for a snack, and he always keeps sour cream handy. Not because there’s anything wrong with how Sid cooks, but because that’s what he likes, having a little Russian mixed in with the American.

Sid sometimes says he misses poutine, but other than that, Geno can tell Sid doesn’t really understand, even though he wants to.

\- - -

Geno used to love horseradish. He used to always keep some both fresh and jarred in his fridge, used to have contests with Max over who could stand more in their mouths until they were both red-faced with tears streaming down their cheeks. Now he just spreads it on sandwiches, sometimes, but it tastes more bitter now that there are bittersweet memories to go with it, since Max is gone.

Geno remembers being little and whining once to his mother that he was tired of vinegar and pickled _everything_ , and why couldn’t they have sweet food, sometimes?

“Life is not always sweet,” his mother had said. “Food is like life, Zhenya, you have the sour, you mask it with the sweet. You must learn to handle that sourness to appreciate the sweetness more, or it is lost on you.”

He understands better, now, what she meant, that even as good as his life is now, there will always be the bitter sting of losing people - Sergei, Max, Jordy - and that it makes keeping people like Tanger and Flower and Sid that much sweeter.

\- - -

A few weeks later, Geno comes back from the gym to find Sid in his kitchen, swearing over little balls of dough.

“Fucking pelmeni,” he explodes, smashing another one that doesn’t fold properly.

“That pelmeni?” Geno asks. Sid jumps, looking guilty.

“It was supposed to be,” he says, and Geno laughs a little, kissing a flour-covered cheek.

“Is hard recipe, need special tools. Why you try to make pelmeni, Sid?”

“I was trying to do something nice!” Sid grumps. “Because of the pickles, and the horseradish, and I thought maybe you were homesick, and -”

Geno frowns. “You worry I go back?”

“No,” Sid says. He looks confused. “I was just trying to be nice. Should I be worried?”

“No,” Geno says, because he’d never have started anything with Sid, never taken that risk unless he was sure that Sid was something big to him, something too important to ignore, someone worth giving up on large parts of who he thought he knew he was just to be with. Sid pushes everyone by default of being Sid, he pushes them to be better, to work harder, to want bigger, and Geno would rather never eat Russian food again than live without that.

“Then calm down,” Sid says gently, framing Geno’s face with his hands, his left thumb rubbing back and forth, accidentally pushing flour into Geno’s cheek. “Let me cook you something.”

“Pickled herring?”

“Something _nice_ , Geno.”

\- - -

“Mm,” Sid says, settling down at the foot of the couch where Geno was aimlessly napping, “turkey sandwiches.”

“No peanut butter?” Geno teases.

“That’s only before games,” Sid says. “That’s the only time I eat it.”

Geno props his head up on one elbow and frowns thoughtfully. “Why?”

“It’s stupid,” Sid says, which means it isn’t, he just wants Geno to drop it. Instead Geno waits expectantly until Sid sighs.

“Growing up,” he says haltingly, “my family wasn’t - we weren’t _poor_ , but we didn’t have much. We were always cutting corners. And peanut butter and jelly was cheap, you know? So my mom made it for me before every game, and it became a thing. But my favorite sandwich was this,” he gestures to the piles of turkey, the crisp lettuce, the generous cuts of tomato, and thickly oozing mayo. “Because this was all expensive, it was rich people food.” He lets out a little laugh. “I used to think, when I was little, that when I was a rich hockey player, that all I’d eat was turkey sandwiches. That’d be how I knew I made it.”

“You not always eat it,” Geno points out. Sid has all sorts of sandwiches - ham and cheese with mustard, tuna fish, egg salad, pulled pork - if it’s in between two slices of bread, Sid likes it.

“I save it for good days,” Sid says.

“Today a good day?” It’s an off day. Sid usually hates off days.

“Well, I was thinking you could fuck me when I was done here,” Sid says, as casually as he would comment on the weather. He licks a glob of mayo off his fingers and God help Geno, it’s the most erotic thing he’s seen in his life.

“Eat fast,” he says.

\- - -

After the Pelmeni Incident, Sid doesn’t give up on trying to cook Russian food, but he does go simpler. He tries Olivier Salad next, chops up the pickles and carrots, mixes thick mayo in with cubes of ham and egg and potatoes and peas. Geno could make it himself, but he’d never bother with the chopping, and he likes to watch Sid lick his fingers as he makes sure to put in just the right amount of salt and pepper.

“This is good,” Sid says blissfully, taking a spoonful to taste. “Eggs and potatoes, always good together.”

“Good,” Geno agrees, watching Sid’s lips wrap around the spoon and his eyes flutter closed.

After that comes rich beef stroganoff and flaky baked herring, and then one morning Geno wakes up to Sid in an old, stretched-out t-shirt of his making bilini. He’s much better than Geno’s ever been, knowing exactly how much batter to pour to make them perfect and thin and when to flip.

“How you get so good?” Geno asks sleepily, standing behind Sid with his arms around Sid’s middle. He likes that Sid is shorter than him but solid enough to use to stay upright, that his neck is at just the right height for Geno to lean down and kiss and his shoulders are broad enough to rest on.

“I’ve made pancakes before,” Sid says. “It’s not that hard, you’re just lazy.”

“Not lazy,” Geno says, but he is, when it comes to this, and impatient too.

“That boy feeds you well?” his mother asks when she calls later that morning, and Geno says “Yes,” because he feels fuller than he’s ever felt.

\- - -

Sid no longer asks if Geno wants his pickles, he just hands them over before he starts on his sandwich. 


End file.
